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"Basquiat x Warhol, with four hands": "this other artist who would be Basquiatwarhol"

View of a detail of the painting "China Paramount" (1984), made jointly by Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol, exhibited in "Basquiat x Warhol, à quatre mains", at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris. © Siegfried Forster / RFI

Text by: Siegfried Forster Follow

9 min

When shooting star Jean-Michel Basquiat, who came from street art, the first black painter recognized by the critics, died at the age of 27 following an overdose, met the New York pop art superstar Andy Warhol, a unique collaboration was set up: 160 canvases painted together in two years. At the Fondation Louis-Vuitton in Paris, the exhibition "Basquiat x Warhol, à quatre mains" tells the story of this incredible and fruitful adventure of two artists who died shortly after. Interview with Associate Commissioner Olivier Michelon.

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RFI: How did this four-handed collaboration between Basquiat and Warhol start?

Olivier Michelon: This collaboration began with a friendship, by Jean-Michel Basquiat who met Andy Warhol in 1982. He gives her the present of a painting that represents both. Afterwards, there is a series of portraits crossed between the two artists. Then Warhol handed Basquiat pictures to paint on. Quickly, the two artists will end up working together, in the same studio, on the same canvases.

At first, Basquiat had a boundless admiration for Warhol. On the other hand, Warhol was at first rather skeptical about this very young painter called Jean-Michel Basquiat, born in 1960 in Brooklyn. What have both learned or gained from this joint work?

Jean-Michel Basquiat has admired Warhol since he was a teenager. He tried to meet him several times. Warhol saw in the new New York art scene a proof of energy, a novelty that interested him. This is also why he is interested in the work of Jean-Michel Basquiat. When the two of them meet, the friendship is going to be pretty fast. Technically, this is the moment when Warhol will really go back to painting, drawing by hand, and no longer with a screen printing screen. It will allow Jean-Michel Basquiat to work on huge formats. And both will confront their universes, their styles and also their repertoires of forms.

Visitor in front of the painting "Dos Cabezas" painted in 1982 by Jean-Michel Basquiat showing Basquiat next to Andy Warhol, in the exhibition "Basquiat x Warhol, four hands", at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris. © Siegfried Forster / RFI

Warhol often drew his power from the outside, from logos, brands, from the glory provided by television. With Basquiat, on the contrary, it is rather the interior that comes out, emotions, anger, youth... In their work together, in their works created with four hands, what is the third eye of their collaboration?

We could oppose the work of Jean-Michel Basquiat to that of Andy Warhol, with a distant side and a faster side, between a universe stolen from the media, and another that would be more subjective... In my opinion, things are a little more complicated. Jean-Michel Basquiat said he copied, but with his own hand. He has always worked with photocopying, he has also done screen printing. So things get muddled. That's what created what Keith Haring called a "third spirit." That is to say, when these two artists work together, obviously, we see their respective signs, we see their style, their manner, their "hand". But each will appropriate the signs of the other, and the way of doing things of the other too. And this will create this other artist who would be "Basquiatwarhol" and more Basquiat or Warhol.

The poster uses another poster from the time to symbolize this four-handed collaboration, showing the two artists with boxing gloves. Was this chosen iconography inspired by the fight of the century between Mohamed Ali and George Foreman in Kinshasa in 1974?

In my opinion, we are closer to the boxing posters of the 1930s, 1950s than that of the fight of the century. When Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol decided to do the exhibition together, at Tony Shafrazi's, in 1985, they staged this exhibition with a poster in which they appeared as boxers. With this idea of fighting, of promotion. This is obviously an amused gesture. Boxing is also an iconography dear to Basquiat, because the boxer is the prototype of the hero, but also of martyrdom. For Warhol, there is a perhaps more pop side. In the exhibition, with another work around boxing, Ten Punching Bags, we see that things are a little more complicated, a little sadder too, than this playful aspect of the fight.

View of a detail of the painting "African Masks" (1985), made jointly by Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol, exhibited in "Basquiat x Warhol, à quatre mains", at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris. © Siegfried Forster / RFI

Because the installation Ten Punching Bags (Last Supper), made between 1985 and 1986, but never exhibited during Basquiat and Warhol's lifetime, refers to a gallows and its suite of black hanged men evoked by the song Strange Fruits by Billie Holiday. The African-American, even African, universe appears several times in the works made with four hands. Is African Masks, the most monumental work in the exhibition, really "a masterpiece of African art" as Warhol called it?

It is not an African masterpiece, it is a painting made in New York, in 1984, by Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat, with African iconography. An iconography taken from books or at the Metropolitan Museum where there was in the same year a major exhibition, Primitivism in Modern Art, where there were many of these works exhibited. Warhol said of this work that "it is more than 30 meters long", in fact, it is ten or eleven meters, which is already a lot. Apart from its size, it is a disturbing work, because we do not know what Warhol is doing in this case. But we see that some of these masks were designed by Andy Warhol.

What relationship did the two artists have with Africa?

Andy Warhol's relationship with Africa is difficult for me to answer. I don't know her, I don't even know if Andy Warhol was on the African continent. Jean-Michel Basquiat went to Africa once, after his collaborations with Andy Warhol. As an African-American, originally from Haiti, the Caribbean area, this is obviously something that interests him. He has also worked quite a bit on mythologies or ritual practices from West Africa, including Yoruba myths.

View of a detail of the painting "Taxi, 45th/Broadway" (1984-1985), made jointly by Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol, exhibited in "Basquiat x Warhol, à quatre mains", at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris. © Siegfried Forster / RFI

Taxi, 45th/Broadway is also a four-handed collaboration. Warhol painted a yellow hood, and Basquiat his experiences as a black man in a very racist American society. How did they work on this work?

Among the works on display is Taxi, 45th Street/Broadway, which depicts a scene where we imagine that Warhol first painted this funny yellow taxi creek, a little child's toy. Basquiat finished it by putting a rude taxi driver inside who insults a person trying to take a taxi. According to the testimonies we have, this person is Jean-Michel Basquiat who tries to get into a taxi and the taxi refuses to see him [because he is Black, Editor's note]. There, where the painting is even more complex, is when we realize that this person does not only have black skin, he is just drawn, he is actually invisible.

The exhibition celebrates these four-handed works by Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat as masterpieces, but at the 1985 exhibition, both artists came under harsh criticism. Why did the collaboration between Warhol and Basquiat end?

In 1985, when they did the exhibition together, the reviews were quite negative. In a way, the critics already know what they are going to say: an old artist looking for youth. A young person looking for fame. Part on this basis, the reception could not be "amazing". And Basquiat will be hurt by this criticism. Maybe by his youth, because it's quite a strong media exposure for him. For Warhol, things are a little simpler. He has more distance from things. And it is at this point that the collaboration will be loosened, even if the artists will continue to see each other, even to work a little together, as we can see in the exhibition, with Ten Punching Bags (Last Supper).

View of the exhibition "Basquiat x Warhol, à quatre mains", at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris. © Siegfried Forster / RFI

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